This is the first Thanksgiving of my life spent un-grandparented. Not that we were always with Gram and Pop or Mame and Bob for the holidays, but they were omnipresent, even a couple thousand miles away. Since coming of age, I’ve laid holiday tables with place-cards, because of them. I’ve put on something pretty, hummed the Episcopal Doxology, and offered up gushing toasts. It’s what I know.
To their generation, most meals ranked highly enough for cloth napkins and fine manners; holidays elevated food and family to holy rituals, even when there was a cheeky hint of the sacrilege in the air. (My paternal grandparents hosted ‘fake church’– a bizarre fusion of biblical parables and grade-school drama club.)
In the context of meals-made-to-go at every stop-and-shop, this reverence is almost inconceivable today. Cooking everything from scratch? Provincial. Our grandmothers arrived at dinner with a wrapped index finger (onion-cutting accident) and a burnt wrist (trying to scrape the burnt sugar from the bottom of the oven before it stuck), but also a fresh application of lipstick and Chanel No. 5 behind the ears. Our grandfathers kissed their wives before carving into the big bird.
This year, without my multi-generational grounding, I ready my own family to carry our portion of the feast to a friends’ table. There will be 19 of us, an emphatically kid-heavy group sure to spill some cranberry sauce. My grandmother would approve. She possessed a spot-on sense of how to balance the divine and irreverent, the formal and relaxed. Would that I could phone her this morning for a recipe, and call back tonight with a report.
Instead, we’ll do today what millions do – piece together our own crazy quilt of inspiration and influence, and call it Thanksgiving. As whispers wrap ‘round tables laden with pasta or poultry, Beaujolais or beer – from neighbor to mother-in-law to uncle to friend. “This is what we’re thankful for…”
What a beautiful piece Liz. While I didn’t miss having the “fake church” this year, I did miss having the matriarch of our clan at the head of the table. But with place cards proper and the singing of “Over the River”…I think she would have been proud of us. much love. Jen
Thank you…
Thank you, thank you…
I love you,
Johanna
I am thankful for you, Liz, as my niece and for your being able to put into words what I feel.
Love you,
Marty
Thank you, too.
This is why cousins and aunties are part of that sisterhood I was talking about…
xxxx
Simply Lovely
Reassuring to know that another woman of my generation is still honoring the civilizing traditions of a an era gone by.
I just love it . . . even though we were all in different places this Thanksgiving . . . Mom, Katy, Tim and I continue with Grammy’s “turkey notes”. Even though they are completely different then the ones she ever wrote.
You definitely express what we are all thinking . . .
Love you,
Sara Cogswell
Thanksgiving
I’ve now read your piece three times and cry each time. New traditions are so painful to start. Thank you for writing what all of us are thinking. Love you, Nan
Re: Thanksgiving
Words are always just barely adequate, but they’re a start…
Love you all, too…
This is such a thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing it!